Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
by FairyHedgehog
Summary: Not all fairytales have a happy ending. -Oneshot-


Author's note: Hello and thank you for taking your time to read this. I wrote it because this fandom needs more Calendar Girl. For those not familiar with her character, she appears in the episode "Mean Seasons". Please take a little of your time to leave a review- I'm desperately trying to improve my writing so I need all the constructive criticism that I can get. Thanks.

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First the mirror showed a young girl. She was beautiful; a pale face inset with big, dark brown eyes, framed with mahogany locks.

When she grew older, the face was not only in the mirror. It was on posters, advertisements, and calendars. The world shared her beauty, and, for the briefest of moments, the world was as perfect as she saw herself to be.

Then she began to feel the eyes on her; critical, judging, evaluating her every move.

Suddenly her beauty seemed diminished. Her looks were no longer enough to keep the world satisfied. Striving for perfection, she embellished herself with products and tried to cut a few more inches from her waist. She succeeded, but to her the woman in the mirror did not look any different.

Then her beauty began to fade. Her imperfections became harder to hide. Lines of age began to creep under her eyes and around her mouth, marring her once-smooth face. She had done all she could to preserve her looks, yet they were slowly leaving her.

Years passed and the younger, prettier girls stepped in front of her. She wore a mask of makeup, and took the jobs she would not have deigned to touch before. In her dreams the mirror lied, and showed the young woman she had been.

She was not young anymore, and in her waking moments the mirror only served to remind her of this. Her days of beauty and happiness had been squandered, and now she only had insubstantial memories left.

The world, in which the woman had once strutted about so proudly, quietly shut her out.

The face in the mirror could only grow older.

Attempts were made to force her back into the world. A brief stint on a television show was all that came out of them. The man who had promised to find her work gave up on her and turned her away.

There was nothing that she could do. The people turned their back on the fading face with an uncertain smile. Her success had been as impermanent as her looks.

One by one, the mirrors she owned were covered, yet she was unable to escape reminders of her appearance. Windows held fleeting reflections of her as she passed. She could not go anywhere without seeing a poster displaying a girl with a saccharine smile and a flawless face, a girl like the one that she had once been. Occasionally, someone would pause and stare at her, and ask, "Hey, you look familiar. Weren't you famous?"

After a little while, people stopped doing that. This did not make her feel any better.

She began to hide herself under long coats, masking as much as she could of her face with scarves. It did nothing to ease the sense of the eyes following her. They had thrown her aside, yet they would not stop looking. Now, a mere smile from a cashier seemed to conceal a covert judgement of her appearance.

When things became truly desperate, she sought out people who could give her back her youth. She found one, and he isolated her imperfections, explained to her what he could smooth, stretch and cut away, assured her she would be beautiful again.

When he had finished, and the woman awoke, the first thing she did was ask for a mirror. The doctor handed one over with a confident, practised movement, telling her what a success the operations had been.

The woman stared at the face in the mirror. Its flaws were still glaringly obvious. The skin was still wrinkled and wan. Her eyes were hardened and no longer had their youthful gleam.

The mirror was thrown down, and shattered into flashing shards that skittered over the pristine floor. The woman did not hear the doctor's cry of surprise and indignation, nor did she pay attention the disappointment welling up within her. She had spent too long fretting.

Instead, she thought of the people in her earlier life, the people who had used her, and then tossed her away like she was nothing. The people for whom she had slaved away, and strained her body, just so they could push her aside without another thought. For the first time in a year, she felt her lips curl up in a smile.

Her time had run out. Now theirs would too.


End file.
